As International Olympic Committee president, she will be the most powerful sporting official on earth — and is set for regular encounters with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kirsty Coventry, a former Zimbabwean swimmer, won the race to be the next president of the International Olympic Committee, the most powerful job in world sport.
After a single round of voting at a lavish resort on the Greek coast, Coventry beat out Britain’s Sebastian Coe, Spain’s Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. and a handful of other candidates to secure the role.
Coventry, who won seven Olympic medals in the 2000s, was widely seen as the favored candidate of outgoing IOC President Thomas Bach. She will be the first woman to hold the role and the first African president of the organization.
In remarks following the announcement, Coventry said that it was an “extraordinary” moment and a “huge honor.”
Coe, an Olympic gold medallist in the 1980s who became a British Conservative MPs in the 1990s and ran the London 2012 Olympics organizing committee, was noted for his hard-line on Russian competitors and tough stance against trans athletes taking part in women’s competitions.
Samaranch Jr.’s father ran the IOC as president from 1980 until 2001, during which period he presided over a scandal involving allegations of bribery in Salt Lake City’s winning bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
In addition to running the IOC and coordinating sports across the world, the president will conduct high-level diplomacy with key international leaders.
With the next Summer Olympics scheduled for Los Angeles in 2028, that likely means frequent contact with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Gianni Infantino, the president of world football governing body FIFA, which will hold its next World Cup in the U.S. in 2026, has already taken steps to ingratiate himself with the White House.
The upcoming Winter Olympics — Milano Cortina 2026 — is set to take place at sites across Lombardy and northeast Italy next February.
